Fans always love the stories behind songs, especially if they are good ones told with the musicians own voice. One thing we have been seeing a lot of lately is album commentary tracks on streaming sites like Rdio and Spotify. These can easily be recorded speaking into a microphone in Garageband and sent to a blog to get a feature, embeded in your stream (like the above) or traded for email addresses/tweets to raise awareness of your group. No matter what album commentary is definitely something many artists will be using as added content to get fans a deeper look into their being.

I’m always curious to see how these new monetization efforts will play out in the end. As intrusive as it might seem, I personally feel like any means of giving your fanbase a voyeuristic look into the creative process, or simply a glimpse into the artist’s life, is a great selling point for fans; although, I’d argue that this concept of adding commentary—much like the supplemental DVDs that no one ever watches—could be expanded upon and delivered to the listener in a way that’s not quite as disruptive to the user experience. This definitely sparked some ideas though, so you’ll have to keep eye on (shameless plug) http://www.amingo.com to track its implementation.

Eric

There are some fantastic radio programs that are using this concept to make their shows available on Spotify & MOG. It’s a great way to discover new artists and then delve deep into their catalog. My favorite is WBEZ’s Radio M, which is distributed through http://www.playdio.com/